So how can you outperform on Instagram such large companies, and make your posts visible to your targeted audience? Here's some hints:

Think out of the box - step 1:
Make your posts at the right time of day

As expected, the top Fortune 500 companies have employees whose 9 to 5 jobs are posting to social media. No - literally - 9 to 5! Actual research shows that 88% of the Fortune 500 Instagram posts were made during East Coast daytime (9am to 9 pm).

However, this was not the interval with the highest engagement! Surprisingly or not, the engagement of visitors on Instagram reaches a peak after 10pm and until 3 am (Eastern Time) - making it a perfect window to publish your posts, as they are proved to see up to 8,78% more engagement than the average posts made by Fortune 500 companies have. Posts made between 11am and 4 pm (Eastern time) get the lowest engagement rate - up to 6,58% lower.

OUR TIP: Want to get high engagement of your Instagram posts? Think out of the box: a lot of your customers check their Instagram accounts as a leisure - outside of their working hours, late at night. Also, many of them are outside of the Eastern Time - get out of the crowd and make your posts during the high-engagement interval.

Think out of the box - step 2:
Make your posts at the right time of week

Since large companies take Instagram posts as a daily job, that means that on Saturdays and Sundays they are posting at a very low rate (among the Fortune 500 Instagram posts, only 8,5% came on a Sunday)!

However, as we were saying before, Instagram users usually browse as a leisure - so they find the time to do this exactly in the weekend, checking for the freshest content. These facts make weekend - and particularly Sundays - a high-engagement time for Instagram posts, being also the least competitive days for new posts! The most competitive days are actually Thursdays and Fridays.

OUR TIP: For high engagement posts, think out of the box again: make your post during users' preferred time for Instagram instead of your own. Think of the high-engagement time that is weekends.

Think out of the box - step 3:
Publish with a filter - a great one

If you weren't surprised enough till now about the differences in Instagram between what companies post and what customers desire, get ready for more: 89% of Instagram posts are done without a filter. Despite that, the highest engagement is got by the post using filters; amongst all filters, the one that brings almost 6% more interactions seems to be Mayfair filter - even though it is being used only by 0,49% of the brands in Fortune 500.

OUR TIP: Remember to respect your competition - don't just throw in there any image for the sake of posting something today and especially don't use pre-made graphics. On Instagram it's authenticity that sells, so use the platform's editing features for a post of success.

Think out of the box - step 4:
Use hashtags and question marks

Studies made on Instagram posts of Fortune 500 companies showed that the posts using hashtags get the most interactions with the users - comments and likes. The perfect number of ####? - 11! Statistics also show that the posts including question marks also brought a higher interaction than the average, while those with exclamation marks were not too popular.

Why are hashtags so attractive? Instagram is social media and hashtags help user surf and find their favourite subjects and themes.

OUR TIP: Instagram allows quite long text - take advantage of all the space offered by the platform and include as many hashtags as you like to improve your posts' visibility. Go further and create your own branded hashtag that users can have within their own content - see the example of Michael Kors - #InstaKors.

CONCLUSIONS

Instagram is an important part of the social media today, therefore a key element into promoting your brand across the web. Using it wisely can generate high engagement from users and in the end contribute to your online (and not only) revenue as well as your brand recognition.

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